I see a number of trends in the IT industry that will soon play a central role in shaping up successful business practices, and have a domino effect on associated industries. Here are some thoughts emanating from my experience as a professor, the CEO of an IT products company, FatPipe Networks, and as the Chairman of the Board of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development for the state of Utah.

Simplification in IT

The first major trend I see is a move towards simplifying IT products and services. There is a bewildering array of choices for IT managers. Over a period of time, there is going to be a need for simplification so that the IT managers can have better control of technology. With more and more Software as a Service (SaaS) applications becoming popular, people will want to simplify their IT practices and move towards SaaS. The trend started with Citrix and thin client nearly 20 years ago, where computing power was removed from the desktop to the server. The trend will now move slowly from the server hosted in-house to virtualized server farms and cloud computing applications. This trend will accelerate as more companies move towards SaaS oriented delivery models rather than IT products and services residing at the company’s own site. With virtualization becoming popular, it would be possible to implement these SaaS models with a higher level of reliability and a high level of confidence from the IT manager’s perspective.

The next issue is focused on the management of data centers. Storage devices and services will be needed to accommodate SaaS and virtualization models. This consolidation of information increases the usage of data centers, which raises another important issue: energy consumption. Data centers are getting larger by the day, and unfortunately, they are power (energy) hogs. They are the new smokeless smokestack industry of America, as they significantly increase the carbon footprint in the community where they are located. What needs to be done is to lower the cost of power consumption by the data centers and use renewable energy for a major portion of their needs.

Green Initiatives